Visiting Writer: Sabina Murray

Sabina Murray was born in 1968 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She now lives in Amherst, MA, with her family, where she directs, and teaches in, the Creative Writing Program at UMass.

In 1989, Murray’s novel, Slow Burn, was accepted for publication when she was twenty years old. Later, she attended the University of Texas at Austin where she started work on The Caprices, a short story collection. In 1999, Murray left Texas for Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she had a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. In January, 2002, Murray published The Caprices, which won the PEN Faulkner Award. Murray’s next two novels, A Carnivore’s Inquiry, and Forgery, were Chicago Tribune Best Books. Her most recent book, published in 2011, is the short story collection Tales of The New World. Murray is also a screenwriter and wrote the script for the film Beautiful Country, released in 2005, commissioned byTerrence Malick.

Murray has been a Michener Fellow at UT Austin; a Bunting fellow at Radcliffe; and a Guggenheim Fellow. She has received the PEN/Faulkner Award, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a UMass Research and Creativity Award, and a Fred Brown Award for The Novel from the University of Pittsburgh. Beautiful Country was nominated for a Golden Bear and the screenplay was nominated for an Amanda Award and an Independent Spirit Award.